Despite the COVID-19 outbreak, Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) began the Spring Semester by offering 23 online courses (15 undergraduate courses and 8 graduate courses) on February 17.  Two of these courses, Mathematics for Computer Science and Mathematics for Artificial Intelligence, are delivered by Professor Andrew Yao.

During the winter recess, Prof. Yao started to explore the use of apps like Rain Classroom and later Zoom to enhance the online learning experience, and tried to get the students actively involved in the network class. Prof. Yao believes online courses should be carefully designed to find ways to engage students to better understand the course content, and find alignment between students’ interests and goals. Following Prof. Yao’s example, IIIS lecturers delivered online courses with the use of the latest information technology that were well-received by students.

Tsinghua has commenced online classes for all of its courses to ensure the health and safety of Tsinghua students and staff during the period of epidemic prevention and control, and to minimize disruption to education outcomes.

Writer: Yuying Chang
Editor: Guo Lili